


Sunflowers et al

by stupidbloodyidiots (orphan_account)



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Drabble, Drabble Collection, F/M, Fluff and Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-16
Updated: 2013-04-16
Packaged: 2017-12-08 16:00:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/763261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/stupidbloodyidiots
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of drabbles off prompts, including "Sunflowers," "Cotton Candy," "Pinwheel," "Swing," "Ice Cream," and "Nightie". Written about sixth months ago to help cope with Amy's upcoming departure.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sunflowers et al

“sunflowers”

_Modern scholars have long debated the dedication of the Arles "_ Sunflowers _," one of Van Gogh’s most iconic and celebrated works. The inscription simply reads ‘For Amy’. There is, however, no historical knowledge of the artist’s association or relationship with anyone by this name. Nicknamed ‘Sunflower Amy’, she has become a figure of artistic mystery and legend, much in the same vein as the servant girl depicted in Vermeer’s ‘The Girl with the Pearl Earring’. Theories speculate that she may have been a childhood friend, an acquaintance with whom he was infatuated, or even an imaginary woman invented by his deteriorating mind in his sad final days. Whoever she was, whether or not she knew the painter and the painting, and whether or not she ever existed at all, Amy has undoubtedly been immortalized by this masterpiece._  

Amy—famed, immortalized, legendary—runs a hand over these words, printed neatly in a large tome. They sit beside one another in the reading room of The Library, several hundred years in its time stream before his last visit, the memory he’s tucked away neatly for better or for worse. He waits for her reaction, for anything, but she just keeps tracing the little letters of her own name, engraved inescapably on to that page. He gives her a nervous smile.

“There you go, Pond,” says the Doctor, leaning over to brush his lips against her forehead. “You wanted to be in the history books.”

 

\--

 

“cotton candy”

 

The find a bench a few hundred yards off the fairground and observe the neon lights making sketches on the blackness of the night.

Amy twirls a bit of cotton candy about her finger and then sticks the whole thing in her mouth and sucks. Sort of an odd gesture, or maybe odd isn’t the world, but he snorts at rather than reprimands the grin that she gives him after. She has a significantly diminishing effect on his standards for humor. Or maybe it’s the air on this planet.

“So,” she begins, her head tilting back to observe the three moons hung in the sky, and not for the first time tonight—they’re mesmerizing, real but unreal, as contrary and familiar as everything else she’s encountered on these journeys. “Y’know how there’s space versions of things, and regular versions of things?”

“No, I don’t.” She frowns at him, and elicits a shrug. “Space is regular for me.”

“ _Well,_ for me, you’ve got… got your space burgers, and your regular burgers. And your space Florida, and your regular Florida!” He nods—has to give her that one. Her eyes twinkle, and she nudges his arm playfully. “Your space men and your regular men.”

A smile tugs at the corner of his lips, and Amy feels peculiarly satisfied. 

“So what’s your point then, Pond?”

“My point is…” She laughs, that subversive little giggle that infuriates as much as it pleases, like she knows something you don’t know, and it’s worse when she does. Her mouth does it too, playing with some secret, smirking balefully. “Space cotton candy is better.”

 

\--

 

“pinwheel”

 

He buys her a pinwheel on Omacron-17. 

It is a delicate toy, to be handled gently by nature, made of odd conflicted shapes like curved triangles, and lines and circles intersecting. The wings glint cheekily in the sun, reflecting shades of grubby purple and amber—not an expensive thing, surely. But she stares at it in the shop window for a long time, the image of that pinwheel jostling her in funny places, places Amy Pond doesn’t usually get jostled. She recalls the ticking noisy of the one in her garden at home, her metronome on the night she waited, counting the minutes and hours as the wind dictated. She doesn’t remember the pinwheel so much as the noise, and when she looks at this one in the shop window light years away from then, she can hear it, unmoving as it may be. She quakes at the realization of how far she’s gone and who with, and where she’ll end up next.

And then half an hour later, he hands her the thing over their lunch, and she remembers: it’s just a pinwheel.

She explains to him, about the garden, and that night, but not saying much that she hasn’t said before. Homesick? he asks, and she shakes her head vehemently, _no, no_ , _I’m not, I want to keep going_. They both have a talent for statements that begin like folded blankets dropped from tall heights, and come undone as they fall, spreading across the air. _It’s alright_ , he says, as if it were a concession or a sad truth. _We mustn’t forget who we are._

 

\--

 

“swing”

 

Sometimes it feels as if someone took all these details from her microscopic Leadworth life and scattered them across Creation, letting them fall where they would, strangely familiar specks of dust that thematically should have reminded her of how we’re all the same at the end of the day, common ground and that business, the universality of the universe—but only ever realistically succeed in making her feel a bit like shoving her head into one of the purplely dunes of Quatar-2’s tenth moons, a la the ostrich.

(And it did happen, the scattering, but it’s another story; a good one you already know.)

“Aliens have swingsets?” she demurs, eyeing the contraption, which they stumbled upon while wandering a colonized meteor. It looks surprisingly similar to what she knows. Almost eerily so.

“’Course!” He bounds towards it, hopping awkwardly to stand on the seat, feet splayed as wide as he can get them, and he takes the chains on either side in his hands, attempting to wind the swing up so it’ll twirl out erratically, but his main accomplishment is banging his head against the upper bar. It leaves a dazed but still enthused expression on his face as he clamors down, panting.

“We had one in the garden when I was a little girl.”

“Did you?” His eyes light up. “I remember! Lovely one, that. Very charming.”

“Don’t understand what aliens would need with a swingset,” Amy mutters. The Doctor turns back to admire the thing. He pats her arm and smiles, reassuring.

“All children need to play, Pond.”

There it is again, the universality, shoving its epic, all-encroaching message down her throat. Like she can’t just _run_. She has to learn something, too. And it’s bloody obnoxious.

 

\--

 

“ice cream”

 

The TARDIS has everything: circus tents, a swimming pool, a room full of snowglobes, padded cells, Turkish baths, an art gallery, two hundred broom cupboards (“And counting!”), a movie theatre, four giant chess boards, bowling alleys, the library, the main holodeck, the casual holodeck, ten locked doors marked _do not enter,_  one locked door marked _please enter_ (Amy ponders this frequently), a walk-in espresso machine (it’s a thing), a corridor where the walls have sprouted poesies, a fifties style American diner complete with jukebox, unused dog runs, a room that looks like a lamp store, and another one that’s just clocks.

But it doesn’t have an ice cream parlor.

Or any ice cream at all.

You’d think an automated gourmet kitchen could at least manage a nice French Vanilla, or some Ghirardelli chocolate, but _no._

She complains of this to the Doctor one night. He tries to brush it off.

“Isn’t there a bit of strudel or something? Oh, the other day she made me these _brilliant_ pastries, I think they’re actually from Yergrey, but they were flaky and there was this sort of strawberry-geesh filling—geesh, that’s a Yergish fruit, just delicious—”

“I want _ice cream_ , Doctor.”

He scans her where she stands on the console deck, a hip jutted sassily to the side and an eyebrow quirked in similar fashion, and so ginger, too, always with the ginger. He sighs—mostly giving in, but a smidge admiring, because she’s certainly determined, isn’t she?

“Okay. Best in ice cream in the universe. Amy Pond!” He sometimes says her name like it conveyed its own meaning, something beyond her identity, like a catchphrase or a figure of speech. Amy Pond!

They step out of the TARDIS and she sees a waterfront, shrouded by night.

“Where are we?”

“San Francisco, Earth. 2011.” She tosses him a curious look. “Ice cream is a human delicacy.” He guides her by the elbow, turning her away from the bay to look at a series of buildings sitting on the hill above them.

“What’s that?”

“Ghirardelli Square! Don’t you see the sign? It’s massive.” Amy swerves to face him, affronted.

“I didn’t say Ghirardelli.”

He taps the end of her nose, his grin softening his otherwise angular features. “Gotcha. Psychic ship, psychic Time Lord. Come along!” 

He clatters up the stairs, and it takes a long moment before she’s keen to follow. Psychic ship, psychic Time Lord, and a lot of things rattling around in her head that he doesn’t need to know. Bugger.

 

\--

 

“nightie”

 

“YOU ARE A TOSSER,” she boos, over the thunderous rhythm of the massive wind turbine they’re currently hiding behind. They’re being chased (his fault) by usurper beings of pure light energy, whose proper name is actually pronounced using multiple sequences of tongue clicks and elaborate hand gestures, so they’ve taken to referring to them as the glowies for short. It’s not inaccurate, after all.

“I’M A TOSSER? YOU’RE THE TOSSER,” he shouts back. 

“YOU DON’T KNOW ME!”

“I’VE SEEN YOU IN YOUR NIGHTIE.”

“I’VE SEEN YOU IN YOUR UNDERPANTS.”

 “I’VE SEEN _YOU_ IN _YOUR_ UNDERPANTS.”

“I’VE—WAIT, WHAT?”

 


End file.
